China selects women Astronauts: “China has selected two military air transport pilots as its first female astronauts, the country’s state media reported Wednesday. The only hitch? The women had to be hitched â€” as in married â€” to make the cut.”

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One thought on “Spamjazzling (18th March, 2010)”

I was moved by mjg’s post “the fallacy of the completely inclusive community” and by what I saw as a fallacious concept of “free speech” that fails to protect freedom for women and other minority groups within the FLOSS communities. Inspired by the incidents I’d read about on the GF wiki, and by the education I’ve been getting on both the wiki and the blog over the past couple of days, I put out a call for FLOSS communities to start working out what “free speech” really means. Link and call follow.

“I just want to make sure that those of us who care about a freer, more open world put some serious thought into what “freedom terms” like “free speech” actually mean. I think the most appropriate way to do this is to have a lot of free speech about what exactly this means. Since we all spend so much time in front of our computers anyway, let’s speak freely about questions like these:

1. What does “free” in “free speech” mean?
2. What does “free” in “free society” mean?
3. What kind of speech contributes to the free cultivation and expression of ideas?
4. What kind of speech is actually detrimental to freedom in a community?
5. What can or should the community do about it?

The depressingly long list of abuses, assaults and other transgressions committed against women in the FLOSS communities testifies to the need to have very frank conversations about these things. I have seen the argument that the community’s image will be hurt by conversations around real abuse, but to the contrary, I think the image can only be helped if FLOSS men are willing to face these problems as adults in charge of a horizontal social movement. People will be impressed by the community’s ability to identify problems and solve them. More women will feel safer and will contribute their talents to the movement, and by extension, will encourage more women to join the relevant fields and professions.

I can’t code and my only stake in FLOSS is that I believe in a free and open society and I love using truly free software. But these are my two cents. Do with them what you will.”